Re:I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as t...
by slavik81 on Sunday July 04, 2021 @04:08AM
(#27728045)
> We don't worry about people memorizing proprietary source code and "accidentally" using it
I'm not sure why it's different, but that's a common concern with music. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/4v8u8d...
Re:I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as t...
by dTal on Sunday July 04, 2021 @05:08AM
(#27728257)
That's a really good observation. Perhaps it highlights an essential difference between two modes of thought - a fuzzy, intuitive, statistical mode based on previously seen examples, and a reasoned, analytical calculating mode which depends on a precise model of the system. Plausibly, the landscape of valid musical compositions is more continuous than the landscape of valid source code, and therefore more amenable to fuzzy, example-based generation; it's entirely possible to blend two songs and make a third song. Such an activity is nonsensical with source code, and so humans don't even try. We probably do apply that sort of learning to short snippets (idioms), but source code diverges too rapidly for it to be useful beyond that horizon.
Re:I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as t...
by visarga on Saturday July 03, 2021 @05:38PM
(#27725130)
This is not such a big problem in reality because the output of Copilot can be filtered to exclude snippets too similar to the training data, or any corpus of code you want to avoid. It's much easier to guarantee clean code than train the model in the first place.
You've hit the nail on the head here. If this is okay, then neural nets are simply machines for laundering IP. We don't worry about people memorizing proprietary source code and "accidentally" using it because it's virtually impossible for a human to do that without realizing it. But it's trivial for a neural net to do it, so comparisons to humans applying their knowledge are flawed.